Azalea Speaks.

5-7-15 SHORT HILLS: Yesterday threatened rain but didn’t deliver. Rain would be good at this point. Today was back in the eighties, and I ran the AC while in the car. We might get into the nineties later this week. The lawn was mowed yesterday for the first time. Spring continues to explode.

New blooms: lilac, Carolina allspice, azalea, flowering currant, Korean spice viburnum.


Azaleas always make a statement.

Flowering currant flowers will turn into a bunch of berries.

Purple lamium.

Summer is here.

5-5-15 SHORT HILLS: The last two days have been in the eighties, summer is here in the middle of spring. Things are drying out and the sprinklers are on for watering at night—always the best time to water, less loss to evaporation.

The trees are all showing leaves, and the view from the upstairs windows is not the bare branches of winter but foliated trees. Flowers are popping out everywhere.

New blooms: dogwood, Kwansan cherry, crab apple, quince, redbud, blueberry, barberry, first viburnum, mertensia, sweet woodruff, yellow lamium, purple lamium, wild mustard.


Quince, usually the flowers are red, this a recent hybrid. The flowers form in the center of the plant not on the periphery.

Kwansan cherry, if you're into pink.

Dogwood, a very red flower, usual color is white or pink.

Virginia blue bells, Mertensia virginica, a woodland ephemera.

Viburnum, our first to open, very fragrant - Chinese snowball viburnum.

Crab apple.

Stand Back, Flowers at Work.

5-3-15 VERMONT: The last two days have been beautiful, warm and mostly sunny, although it’s getting cloudy this afternoon. Buds and shoots are popping open as if they are making up for lost time because of the long winter. Daffodils are showing some flower buds. In other years they have been open in mid-April.

The pond is clearer than it has been for years. Is it the treatments we have used the last couple of years or the very cold winter? Newts, fish, crawfish, frogs and turtles are all present and accounted for. I saw four turtles yesterday all basking in the sun for most of the afternoon. I did the initial pond treatment for this summer. The frog opera is performing nightly.

I also saw a bat flitting around yesterday in the late afternoon, but well before dark. It seemed well, but I have no real way to judge its state of health.

I managed to put away the driveway reflectors that we use as guides for the snow plowers. A job that usually takes ten minutes took an hour on crutches.

New blooms: blood root, hepatica, forsythia, primrose.


Early primrose.

Hepatica. The flowers also come in blue/purple and pink. These stems are furrier than usual.

Blood root with its odd leaf.

More blood root. These are very short-lived flowers.

Time Travel and Sight Lines.

5-1-15 VERMONT: Yesterday was sunny and bright here, but today is gray and dark. Two small clumps of icy snow remain in front of the house, the remnants of huge piles by the porch. They will probably last until tomorrow, May 2. That is the latest date that I remember being snow free.

Going from New Jersey to Vermont in this season of the year always gives me the sensation of time travel. We left lots of flowers in NJ, but here there are only snowdrops and crocus, the grass is mostly brown and nothing is in leaf. That’s where we were on April 6 in NJ.

In a few weeks the leaves will be out here, and the lush foliage of Vermont will last from then until November. Now, before the leaves are out and after the snow is gone, the sight lines let you see deep into the woods and pastures. You can see the shape of the land, the rocky outcrops, the walls and fences following the contours of the fields, the hills and valleys and streams and houses off the road. The road, by the way, is finally drying out.

New blooms: crocus, maple.


Two small piles of ice/snow still here on May 1.

Crocus clump.

Solitary crocus.

Overcast and gray day.

The leaves will hide the sky and forest in a few weeks.

Gorgeous Day.

4-29-15 SHORT HILLS: Today is beautiful, mid-seventies, and we had lunch outside on the patio. The yard looks great, even if rather ragged from lack of trimming and pruning. The big Japanese maple seems to have significant losses. I’m hoping some of the bare branches will still leaf out.

New blooms: marsh marigold, dandelion, grape hyacinth, trout lily, quince.


Daffodils get more interesting as the season proceeds....



Marsh marigold during its brief appearance each spring.

The flowers and foliage will be gone, dormant, in a month and unseen until 2016.

Magnolia behind the junipers.*

Cherry lane on a sunny morning between the Yoshino and the Kwanzan blooming.*

* Judy's pix.

Creeping Toward May.

4-27-15 SHORT HILLS: It hasn’t gotten much warmer, but spring is still building—my nose and sinuses inform me that there's lots of pollen. The grass is starting to grow in some places. The bare spots in our ‘freedom’ lawn haven’t filled in with the usual bunch of short weeds as yet.

Maizie has left several holes in the yard and beds that I will fill when I’m ambulatory.

I’m still assessing the amount of winterkill. Some damage is obvious, but sometimes the full extent isn’t clear until part of a tree or shrub that you thought was OK, doesn’t green up. Shrubs on the Danger List include: crepe myrtle, caryopteris, butterfly bush, rhododendron, beauty berry, kerria, bayberry, St. Johns wort.

New blooms: bleeding heart, pear, white ash.


Bleeding Heart.

Flowering Pear - another early fruit tree.

Spring, Where'd You Go?

4-24-15 SHORT HILLS: Spring has lost its way. The last few days have been cold, 40’s and windy and overcast, with even a bit of snow yesterday. There was no accumulation, of course, and today is partly sunny. It’s a reminder of the harsh winter just past.

New blooms: saucer magnolia, mukdenia.


Saucer magnolia.

Purple violet, white and yellow ones to follow.